Chapter Five Zoe
It’s been so long, but my body remembers.
In my bedroom, on my bed, as he covers me with his long length, his lips matched to mine, the bedcovers cold against my naked back, everything in me melts and reforms to him once more.
In so many ways, it’s as if time never existed between the then and the now...
Except it did. And my brain and heart can’t help building a small protective room against him. Part of me lodges there. I try to ignore that little split of me because his kiss is everything. Being with him, skin to skin, is everything. It’s just...
He pulls back to look deep into my eyes, his dick hard against my belly. “Zoe?”
Suddenly, I push him back, but even as he’s moving, I grab him so he won’t leave me. How can I feel so protected with him and yet like I’m freezing out in the cold? “Don’t. I...” I swallow and shake my head. “I don’t know why, but I can’t...”
For a moment longer, he studies me, before he sighs and slips to the side. Lying there, the back of his hand to his forehead, he stares at the same ceiling that I do. It feels like we’re looking at two different worlds.
What just happened? What did I do? I’ve wanted him for so long, mourned the loss of him for what seems forever, and now I just ruined it? “Finn, I...”
His head swivels to face me. “I was afraid of this, but I think I have a solution. Trust me?”
“So much.” Despite everything, despite the tiny, black room that’s keeping part of me away from him, it’s true.
I do trust that he loves me. I’m just waiting for the other shoe to drop, because apparently, love might not be enough.
Intimacy... fucking him is hard because I can’t quite let go of his having left me. Because what if he leaves again?
“Then,” he says, swooping hair from my face, “I think you need to run us for a while. Forget partnership. I said it before but I don’t think you understood, not exactly.
I think you should be in charge of our relationship, everything from where we eat, to how we make love, to when we have children, to what I’ll wear to work. I give all the decisions to you.”
“What?” My toes crinkle as I turn on my side to face him. “I’m not the dominant kind of person who wants all that. I’m not even sure I’m capable of it.” Or maybe he doesn’t remember what a soft-bellied wimp I am, having spent so much time with Seraphina, who eats worlds for breakfast.
His smile has lots of edges—sexy, hot edges that cut into my core.
“I know you, sweetling. But even though I happen to be the dominant kind of person that you’re not, I think it’s important for you to be the one driving our proverbial bus for a while.
You have my full support to do so. I want you to take what you need from me.
Take everything. Forget what I want from you, or what you think I need.
Just be selfish. I’m giving you full permission to do whatever you want with me and to me.
It might help reset our partnership and make you more comfortable with our future. ”
“Y-you can’t mean that.” I’m stunned by the suggestion.
“I do.”
“But... how?”
“You tell me what to do. I do it. Not just in bed. Everywhere.”
But I shake my head. “I don’t want that.”
He smooths my hair back. “I know. But maybe you need that, or at least need to know it’s possible.
” His grin grabs razorblades again, but the sexy kind.
“As for the physical relationship between us, if you want to kiss me, then kiss me. If you want to lie next to me and read books, do that. Hurt me, if that’s what helps expiate the hurt that I’ve caused you.
I’m tough. I can take it. And I’m asking you to do it so you can feel better about what I put you through. So that you can feel equal again.”
“I don’t want to hurt you.” But feeling equal sounds nice. I don’t know that I’ve ever felt that with him.
He raises his brow. There’s doubt there, but he doesn’t respond to my statement.
“Point is, you deserve to have this relationship go however you want it to go. I’m still going to marry you tomorrow in Vegas, providing that’s what you want.
But the rest... if you don’t want sex, I’ll live with your decision for as long as it takes me to convince you to trust me again. ”
“What if that’s never?” My voice whispers, but the words are more for the sake of argument than because I think that not sleeping with him again is even possible. I already want him inside me. It’s just that damned black box.
“I’m hoping it will be sooner than never.”
“Is this a way to back out of Vegas?” I hear the hurt in my voice, the fear.
He cups my face. “Absolutely not. No matter what happens tonight, if you’re still on board, then we’re getting married tomorrow.
We’ll take the first flight out in the morning, after I call out of work for a leave of absence.
Now that I’ll be staying in the Human realm and taking a wife, I need my job more than ever.
I think the LFBI, and even the FBI, will help smooth it over with the partners. They owe me that much.”
“I won’t have a job anymore, will I? With Mr. Freeman in jail?” The thought saddens me. I’m good at what I do, even if what I do is dull as dirt to most people.
He shakes his head. “I don’t think Rookwood will survive, but I’ll help you find another job. Or, if you prefer, you can be a stay-at-home kind of wife, find other outlets.” But the smile he shoots me has more wicked edges.
“Like?”
“Finding ways to torture me or love me, for example. Starting a family with me, or just keeping me company. You deserve to have the freedom to find out what you want to do with your life, and I’m going to give it to you, if you’ll let me.”
“That’s tomorrow’s problem.” But suddenly, feeling better because he’s given me the power over us, I roll over on top of him. “I love you, you stupid Light Fae... which, by the way, I want to hear more about.”
“Now?” His hips surge upward so that his dick trails a hard, hot road along my belly.
“Later. Definitely later. Right now, I want you to put your wrists together over your head. Don’t move them.”
“Like this?” he asks, instantly complying.
I haven’t seen him in so long, not like this, not his magnificent body spread for me, so I start exploring.
His body confirms his words. He hasn’t been happy.
I can see it in his bones. He’s thinner than he was when we last dated, gaunter, but more honed, too, as if he hasn’t been eating well but has spent a lot of time at the gym working out.
Kissing him is like coming home again. I lose myself in the texture and feel of his mouth, drowning in his taste and scent.
When his arms wrap around me, I don’t object.
This is what I want. I like him being the one in charge in bed, and I don’t care if that makes me a fossil.
Plus, I trust him now. He gave me the power.
If I tell him to stop, he’ll stop. If I tell him to lie still, I’m sure he’ll do so, and somehow, that’s exactly what I need in order to unlock my little black box.
“Permission to explore?” he whispers against the trail his tongue licks over my aching flesh. “Or do you want to tie me up and have your wicked way with me?”
“E-explore,” I allow on a groan as he captures my nipples on his tongue. He alternates between my breasts, sucking, lightly, grazing my skin with his teeth, and driving shock bolts of electricity down between my legs.
After he flips me onto my back again, his mouth and hands rush bliss into my veins.
His touch dances me to an aching need that promises fulfillment.
If I’d ever thought about us together again, something I never let myself do, I would have bet our first time would be a fast and explosive joining.
Instead, it’s slow, as if we have all the time in the world.
And it’s tender, filled with union. I touch him everywhere, stroking and feeling his hard edges.
He does the same for me. It’s a remembering as much as it’s a moving forward.
The staggering pleasure grows in gentle cadence, the waves moving from ripples to something that resembles a tsunami.
It hasn’t reached shore yet. Not just yet. But it’s riding closer.
And closer. He kisses down my body, reverently holding my too fleshy flesh in his hands as if I’m made of delicate glass and he’s afraid to break me.
Like I’m a work of art, or a goddess he worships.
He doesn’t count time. He creates and stretches the moment so that feeling him becomes all there is.
When he reaches the point between my thighs, he sucks my clit onto his tongue and tugs.
I don’t even realize that I’m ready until I splinter apart in a thousand rainbow shards.
I cry out and grab his hair, holding his lips tight against me as I ride out a staggering orgasm.
So incredible is the scalding honey washing through me that tears escape my eyes to trail down my temples.
These are good tears, though. Perfect tears.
Lifting up, he positions himself before my passage, first angling to wipe my tears from my face with gentle, reverent fingers.
“You’re so beautiful. You’re all I’ve ever wanted.
You’re all I’ll ever want.” And then he pushes inside me, stretching my body around his arousal.
His hiss of pleasure, the way his eyes flutter, is everything I need to resolve my deepest fears.
Every empty night that I’ve spent suddenly resolves. The perfect rightness of our joining is written in the stars. It’s the stuff of melodies and novels, wedding bells and forever-after, and my first orgasm doesn’t even finish before it rolls into a new building.
He lifts me so that my ass doesn’t touch the bedclothes, and suddenly, the feel of tall grass tickles from my shoulders to my thighs.
Scents of green and growing flood my senses.
When I tilt my head to the side and look around, I discover that we’re in a field, a field full of light.
Wildflowers in impossible hues billow in the gentle, warm breeze.
Greens more profound than any gems I’ve ever seen nearly assault my eyes.
Above us is a sky of saturated blue, replete with a few plush clouds.
It’s all so beautiful, the word beauty doesn’t do it justice.
But I can’t imagine where we are or how we got there.
Finn lowers me to the ground—somehow—and I lie among the soft blades, joined to him by his dick inside me.
“Lumin. I don’t know how I brought us here, but it doesn’t matter.
I’ll give you all the worlds, Zoe Buckland.
I’ll give you everything I am or ever was.
” He drives deep into me again, so deep that I feel him in my core.
His face contorts, I think with the effort of holding still.
He’s never been so deep inside me before.
It’s almost like he’s lengthened in this world so that he touches the most inner sanctum of me. “Zoe,” he groans.
But I need more. I use his hips as a lever to try to plunge him even deeper. “Harder,” I whisper. “Ruin me. Now.”
My Light Fae doesn’t hesitate. I’m in charge, so he complies.
With a gasping breath, all the while holding my gaze, he lifts and plunges, stroking his magnificent dick along my passage, tempting the acid sweetness in my blood every time he passes over the special spot.
With his fingers, he again tweaks my clit, and soon I’m coming again, falling up into the stars, remaking myself in him, until he explodes with a cry inside me.
Once we come back down, we lie in the sunshine, butterflies fluttering all around us, birds chirping in idle bliss, until I realize it shouldn’t be daylight any more. Not this bright. “Where did the night go?”
“It’s daytime in Lumin.” His lips brush mine. “I didn’t mean to come home, but I guess this is where I thought you belonged. Maybe one day you’ll come here with me for a longer stay.”
And in a twinkling, we’re back in my room, on my bed, dusk falling around the window.
“I thought your magick was locked up?”
“It’s supposed to be. I’ll need to see the authorities sooner than I realized, have them power up the wards that hold it locked inside me.
But that’s a problem for another day. I’m feeling too blissful and calm to worry about it right now.
Plus, it’s settled back down after such an expenditure of energy. I’m not glowing, am I?”
“Not like a lightning bug, if that’s what you mean.”
He bursts out laughing. “Thanks, Zoe. I needed that. Lightning bug!” And he laughs again.
When he settles, I say, “There’s a lot you need to explain, Finn.”
“I’ll get to it, then.” He starts to lift off me, to slip his hard dick from inside, but I grab him tight.
“Not yet. Later.” Because I’ve been so long without him, I need to make more memories.
I’ll learn more about him tomorrow. I now believe there’ll be one for us. Amazing what good sex will do for morale.